Another Homicide Bomber Intercepted In Israel As `Peace' Conference Looms

The normal Palestinian tactic before any `peace ' conference is to ramp up terrorist attacks on Israel.

Today,the Israelis killed a Fatah homicide bomber, Mustapha Mohammed Abu Srur, 21, of Fatah's al Aqsa Brigades, who receive their paychecks directly from 'moderate' Arafat II Mahmoud Abbas. He was apparently en route from Jenin to Tel Aviv after picking up his bomb belt with an accomplice when they were intercepted by the IDF. Abu Srur was silly enough to try to shoot his way out and was killed, while his accomplice was arrested and will become another one of those innocent Palestinian prisoners Abbas wants so badly to have released.

According to Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, this is the eighth attempt at a Palestinian terrorist attack originating from Judea and Samaria in the last thirty days.

Along with the continued rocket and mortar attacks, this signifies the Palestinians' actual strategy prior to the Annapolis, Maryland `peace' conference planned next month by the Bush Administration.

The idea is for the Palestinians to achieve one or more high casualty attacks inside Israel before the conference to energize their own people (who glory in these massacres of Israeli civilians),attempt to intimidate the Israelis, and show that `the armed struggle' continues peace talks or no peace talks...especially if the Palestinians don't get things all their own way at the bargaining table. It also allows Abbas to represent himself as a `stream valve', a `moderate' who can control the violence if he gets everything he asks for as a sacrifice `for peace'.

This is a well worn song from Yasir Arafat's repertoire, and Arafat's old partner in crime Abbas is singing the same old tune...

More evidence of that was Abbas' hardening of his position prior to the conference. He now wants all of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza, and all of East Jerusalem including the Temple Mount and the right to swamp what's left of Israel with genocidal Palestinian `refugees' - or nothing at all, and `the armed struggle' will continue. He also made the gesture of releasing 25 Hamas prisoners as the negotiations for the sulwa (reconciliation) with Hamas continue, midwifed by the Saudis and the Arab League.

As a point of interest, some of you might not be aware that what Arafat II Abbas wants for his prospective Islamist reichlet includes a great deal of Jewish land legally purchased from the Arabs by the Jewish National Fund. The Gush Etzion area for example, where the Jordanian Army and Arab `irregulars' massacred 200 Jews in cold blood in 1948 after they had surrendered,and threw the women and children into a Jordanian military prison under unspeakable conditions until they were repatriated to Israel in 1950.

Abbas, of course, is the equivalent of a casino gambler who tried to take the whole pot, lost,and is now demanding not only his losses back from the house but `compensation' in the form of chips he never won in the first place!

What's more, Abbas himself has hardly any power on the ground. Many Palestinians jokingly refer to him as `the mayor of Ramallah' since he has no power or control anywhere else, stays under heavy guard in Ramallah and pretty much only leaves Ramallah to go abroad.

Israeli PM Olmert likewise has hardly any support among Israelis aside from a coalition of about 70 Knesset members in his coalition who are blocking the country from going to elections because they know they'd be thrown out of office themselves. I've actually seen polls in places like Yediot and Ma'ariv that show him with a positive approval rating of 3% and an error margin of plus or minus 3%, which would lead me to believe that he has very little support outside of his immediate family.

So, we have here what would be a farcical situation if the end results weren't likely to be so bloody.

In Olmert, we have a politician who would love nothing better than to give away as much of Israel as he can get away with - he's under criminal indictment, heartily disliked by most of his countrymen and is a better than even bet to flee Israel to escape jail time. Nothing he gives Abbas short of what amounts to national suicide would be acceptable to the Palestinians, and giving Abbas everything Abbas wants would never be accepted by the Israelis without a national referendum and likely new elections which would repudiate the deal.

In Abbas, we have a `leader' without the power to implement any peace promises he might give to Israel in exchange for any additional real estate and concessions he's offered...not to mention the fact that Abbas has no flexibility to moderate his demands and doesn't speak for all the Palestinians...or even most of them

If the Bush Administration and Condi Rice were really serious about ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, a first step might be to go back to Oslo and Phase 1 and Phase 2 the Road map and insist that the Palestinians honor those agreements and fulfill the original commitments they made before moving on to any kind of final status discussions.

But of course, the Saudis wouldn't like that, which is the name of the game for Bush and Condi Rice anyway.

The proposed Annapolis Conference, like almost all of the ones before it is based on a ridiculous premise..that the Arabs have any interest in actually living next to Israel and accepting its existence. At every `negotiation' of this sort Israel is pressured into making `sacrifices for peace' that endanger it strategically and simply encourage its genocidal foes to continue the process of eradicating it as a nation altogether.

For all of the rhetoric by the Bush Administration about encouraging democracy in the Middle East, US policy continues to undermine America's main ally in the Middle East and possibility of the only real democracy in the region surviving.